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Friday, July 6, 2012

Mark Shea mentions the dunderheads in the Vatican keeping the results of the transparency report secret and then goes onto to explain how he thinks it's wonderful being in a Church with such ineptitude on blatant display.

I *like* that the Catholic Church is so transparently inept and so plainly filled with such obviously failed and ridiculous people, not only among us laity, but throughout the ranks of its clerics as well. My abiding sense, ever since converting, has been one of relief. In sectarian Protestantism, the question is always whether you are pure enough, whether you are a “real Christian”, whether your “really meant it” when you asked Jesus into your heart, whether your latest grotesque failure means your whole life as a Christian has been one huge fraud. The great thing about the Catholic communion is that it begins every single act of worship with the Confiteor in which we all look at each other and say, “Who am I kidding? i don’t belong here any more than you do, so let’s pray for each other and ask the the Graduates in Heaven to put in a good word for us, trusting that God will cut us slack again just so long as we keep cutting each other slack.” It’s a place where there’s room for me: a screwup who can’t tell my butt from a hole in the ground who has no business darkening the door of a Church, much less brazenly walking up there and receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Almighty God, if you please. The whole project is so outrageous from beginning to end that my only excuse is that God tells all these other people they not only can but must do it, so I guess it’s okay that a dubious jerk like me does it too.

I kind of have trouble with this one myself, but, he's right. It's a good reminder.

I hadn't really thought of this you must be perfect to prove you are filled with God as a Protestant thing, but actually, it's reminding me of a bit of research I did a while back and a flash of understanding that I got that was very brief, so not really able to be held onto, let alone something I could write about, so I left it. So, I'm thankful to Mark Shea, whom I normally don't read, for his explanation here.

UPDATE: However, it seems that the Vatican is not allowed to release the results of the report for now, so Mark Shea may have prematurely launched into his tirade against ineptitude, and I was silly for taking his word for what had actually occurred. Last time I do that, now I'm going to check.

(VATICAN CITY) — The Vatican got a report card Wednesday on its efforts to be more financially transparent — but it’s a secret for now.

A Council of Europe committee in Strasbourg adopted a report by independent inspectors examining the Holy See’s efforts to comply with international standards to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The evaluators’ preliminary report found areas where the Vatican was compliant and where it needed work. During the meeting Wednesday of the panel, known as the Moneyval committee, that report was amended by governments who are committee members, as often occurs.

But neither the Vatican nor the Council of Europe would disclose the outcome, saying Moneyval’s procedures forbid it.

The full report will be released in about a month’s time, after the Vatican makes its own observations about the findings.